My Family After Tragedy

  The most difficult aspect of losing a spouse is keeping the daily sanity balance.   We all experience this in different ways and there is no prescription or magic recipe to make things better all of a sudden.  It is not possible.  You might hear from friends and family members that one needs to move on, that there is nothing we can do, that life on earth is for the living, and so on.  I understand the words but what I feel, based on my own experience is hard, it hurts.  We live through all of these, but it is a balancing act. It is especially challenging for parents.   We have two daughters, they are 18 and 21 years old.  No one is ready to lose their mother at an early age.  For them, it continues to be very difficult.  I have noticed that they grieve differently.  One of them has addressed the loss of her mother head-on while the other embraced the situation stoically by herself.   I did not try to change her...

  Every morning when I open my eyes, the first thing I see is a picture of Christina on my night table. She is smiling and looking at me. I remember clearly taking that picture.  The picture gives me a familiar warm feeling.  Back in 1993, after escaping Canada to avoid deportation, under a leafy Floridian tree on a sunny afternoon, I was getting ready to write my first letter to Christina from the USA.  I had so many things to tell her but my hand had refused to write.   Then, with a very soft movement, I placed a dot in the middle of the page, followed by another dot, then another, and another, and another, and a rain of dots flooded the page with a chaotic cadence to make sense only later.  As the dot madness intensified a picture of Christina and me started to emerge.  After a while, in the same way I started this creation my hand stopped.   I looked at the picture and loved it, like a parent loves the first sight of a born child, si...

  Today I woke up and thought that I have not written in a long time and it is not for the lack of thoughts, memories, or incidents of our daily lives which define who we are.  What happens to all these memories, stories, and events after we do not exist anymore?  The answer to that question has hunted me since my sweet darling passed on.  People, in general, are curious.   Recently, while talking to coworkers, a new friend asked me about the origin of my accent.  " American? ".  The first time I have been asked that!  Usually, I get other nationalities, influenced mainly by my phenotype assuming that it is South African, Dutch, German, or from Newfoundland, but once I say my name some say " Ah, yes, I can hear the Spanish accent! ".  Of course, people from work know my name and know where I am from, but they are still curious. Telling people how this accent was created takes me back, through memory lane.  Me in Cuba, coming to Cana...

Christina and I married on December 24th, 1994. In the summer of 1995, we were living together in Canada, in our first home, an apartment we were renting in Burnaby, close to Simon Fraser University, SFU, where she was working.  There, we spent our first wedding anniversary together. Our first anniversary was very sweet and also created a tradition we kept for the rest of our lives.  On December 24th, 1995, Christina and I went to play in the snow at Cypress Mountain and in the early afternoon we went home where we were going to have our first-anniversary dinner together. For dinner, Christina had planned Cornish Hen in creamy Mustard Sauce, accompanied by steamed vegetables and roasted baby potatoes.  For dessert, Christina had prepared a Pineapple upside-down cake the previous day which was one of her favorite desserts.   When we arrived home from our skiing trip, we had a romantic shower together and got dressed up for the occasion.  Christina had a red ...

Our recent trip to Manning Park was supposed to happen on December 24th, 2022, but we did it during the first days of January because we could not do it then. We remembered, honored, and shed some tears but also had a great time playing in the snow, and sharing time together as we have always done. BC Hwy 3 was absolutely beautiful to travel on. I never had a complaint, well maintained. We love to explore British Columbia in all weather! The picture in this post was taken at Lightning Lake, very close to the shore.  The tracks leading to the roses are my own, I selected that spot because it was intact, as nature intended it to be.  The next day, early in the morning, we returned to the lake; I wanted to see the roses before starting our road trip home.  The air was pure and cold and as I looked up into the sky as if looking for something I could see the low clouds moving slowly, pushed by a calm breeze, knowing exactly where they were going.  It was very peaceful....

  There are days I wake up and feel the need for a hug from my wife; then, I close my eyes and every cell of my body remembers her warmth.  How many hugs in a lifetime together?  I think a fundamental part of our successful relationship was hugging.

Every 21st day of each month will live in my memory as long as I exist. Late morning, I visited the cemetery and brought flowers to The Rock.  Later in the twilight of the day, I visited The Rock again, this time accompanied by Raquel.  We took a few Christmas balls of different colors to adorn one of the bushes in the proximity.  We also took a ceramic little house with a light inside.  After our tasks were completed, Raquel and I stood in silence for a few minutes looking at the site where her mother rests. At this time of the year, sunset arrives early in British Columbia, and at about 4:30 PM it is very dark outside.  After dinner and around 7:30 PM I visited the cemetery again.  I wanted to see the little ceramic house lit.  It looked beautiful and more so as some of the glass balls adorning the neighboring bush reflected, dimly, the light of the little house.  I am sure Christina loves it. The rest of the cemetery looked very peaceful at tha...